Dear Bill,

I have spent over 4 years investigating a major fraud against over 50 SMEs in the UK so I know a lot about the banking system in the UK, if not the US. And let’s not start this debate by splitting hairs. Scorpion’s can change their nationality but not their nature.

For two years the police and the FSA refused to get involved in the fraud I and others reported. Now the police say what we uncovered is the biggest financial crime ever in the UK. The police and the FSA continue their investigations. 8 people arrested so far. This fraud cost the tax payers in the UK £1BN from one small office of the bank. Nothing the police or the FSA have done so far has altered the lives of the victims of the fraud who continue to be persecuted for their lack of money. My family has had 22 eviction hearings in 3 years from the bank who first defrauded our company. Then they set up a false account in the name of our company to off set their legal costs in the case. That came to £372,000. Then they added over £250,000 in interest and charges. The cost goes up at over £11,400 per month. The police will not investigate. The regulator gives excuses for the bank. The bank, having finally accepted there was a fraud, says they are a victim but there were no others.

My husband and I represent many of the victims. Some of them are very ill with stress related issues; some have terminal illnesses; some have lost their homes as well as their businesses; most have gone from being successful business people to being destitute.

But we are a success story Bill. Tiny as our group is, we have managed to get the regulator (who came kicking and screaming to the party) and the police involved and 8 people have been arrested. We have no money. We only have our outrage and our determination. Every case of extreme arrogance has its Achilles heel and we are exactly that for one major bank in the UK.

I was over the moon to see the Occupy Wall Street protests start. I’m 55 – until I got involved with the bank in question I can’t say I had a bad life or even thought about banks – in fact, give or take the odd Italian husband, I’ve had a good life. But I can’t see too much of a future for my children or my grand children ( new one arrived two weeks ago). And I have no doubt why they have no future without radical reform.

A minority of clever manipulative sociopaths have decided my children and my grand children have no future because they (the elite minority) have extreme delusions of grandeur. They think they have the right to control the lives of every ordinary citizen and manipulate those lives to their own ends. First they bought the Governments that proport to represent the majority, then they started their dictatorship. And, as in the case of our fight against the UK bank that defrauded my family and many others – I will not accept that.

I do not accept the bankers in Wall Street or in the City of London have the right to ruin my children’s future. The fact I have no money because of their excesses or criminal activities does not make me feel like a second class citizen. I woke up a long time ago to the international con we have been living through and it does not make me feel despondent. It just makes me feel glad I am awake to what has been happening. And I am glad the protesters in New York are also awake.

I have no idea who you are Bill. Maybe you are actually a banker – maybe you are the right hand man to one of the so called masters of the universe. But bear in mind – we all meet the same fate some day. If you think I or millions of others will go quietly into that dark night having had our lives and opportunities wasted and ruined by a few wide boys with posh suits and champagne tastes, you are mistaken. I fully understand we voted in the puppets of these people – and that was our fault. But believe me Bill, as a survivor, it’s never too late to turn around and get it right. My children, the children of every hard working person in the US, the UK, the EU (muppetsville) or even every banana republic in the world, are worth more than the people the US and the UK Governments are busy protecting.

Interesting times Bill. Historical even. I feel very comfortable to have chosen a side. And I love New York and that ultimate metropolis. I love it that they are leading the way forward. You should be proud of them.

Finally Bill, not knowing your position in all this, tell me, do you really think the people in charge of our global financial sector when it hit the wall and who, for the most part, are still making private fortunes, are the kind of people who should retain political and financial power over the masses? Are you happy to have your children’s future determined by them? Just curious.

Kindest regards

Nikki

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Some may say my various tweets on Saturday (24^th September) about Eric Daniels were a bit harsh or that I have been indulging in what has reportedly become a common pastime in the UK, banker bashing. But I have good reason to feel Mr Daniels should not be allowed to cock this last snoop at the British taxpayer or at me.

I do remember 2009, when Eric Daniels became head of HBOS as well as Lloyds. I remember thinking that finally, the victims of HBOS Reading would get a fair hearing and a resolution because obviously, the management of Lloyds would want to clear up such an unwholesome mess. Not so.

I wrote to Mr Daniels on several occasions and those people who replied on his behalf (he never replied personally), simply said that, as far as Mr Daniels was concerned, the issue of HBOS Reading had been dealt with, there was no fraud and the Bank did not intend to correspond further. They are still corresponding now, over two years later and our last letter came from Harry Baines, General Counsel for HBOS and now Lloyds Banking Group, in July 2011. His variation on a theme was the matter has been well ‘ventilated’ and that’s the end of it.

The serious question this behaviour poses is not just as to why Mr Daniels, or anyone else for that matter, would be happy to see business banking clients left in such a sorry state having been defrauded by bank employees but rather; why would the CEO of a bank ignore evidence of criminality and allow the situation to progress to a full scale police investigation which could only be detrimental to the bank and its shareholders?

I’m fully aware that banks get hundreds if not thousands of complaints on a daily basis and they very often deal with them using the ‘delay, deny, dilute’ tactic. But, I truly believe in this instance it was absolute madness and totally negligent to repeatedly ignore complaints about HBOS Reading and even when:

1. Several MPs were asking for a resolution on behalf of Constituents.

2. The HBOS Reading scandal was the subject of a File on 4 broadcast.

3. MPs had a Debate at Westminster on 2^nd June 2009 and James Paice MP even used Parliamentary Privilege to expose some of the unwholesome details (documented on Hansard).

4. The FSA did a Section 166 Review which progressed to a Section 168 Investigation.

What part of the list above would allow the CEO of any business to think this was a matter that could simply be swept under the carpet and denied? At what point did Mr Daniels think the best way forward was to ignore the victims or, in our case, to proceed with trying to evict us from our home 22 times so that we could not continue our investigation into the fraud? Leaving aside integrity or even decency, has Mr Daniels never heard of damage limitation?

And the end result of pretending the HBOS Reading fraud never happened is Thames Valley Police and SOCA are now into their second year of ‘Operation Hornet’, the full scale investigation into what really happened at HBOS Reading. 8 people including 2 bankers have been arrested so far – which suggests that while Mr Daniels has not taken this matter seriously, the police have.

That cannot be good for the reputation of HBOS, Lloyds Banking Group or any of the senior executives, past or present, of HBOS or Lloyds who have refused to deal with the matter. Surely it is the responsibility of these people, who are paid vast amounts of money, to make make sure that a) major frauds do not happen in the Bank and b) when something does go horribly wrong, it is dealt with quickly, fairly and efficiently. But that has not happened – not under Andy Hornby nor Peter Cummings nor Eric Daniels. More importantly, anything detrimental to the Bank’s reputation, is not good for the shareholders which, in this case, means the Country. We have all seen Lloyds share price drop from pounds to pennies – while pay and bonuses for the top bankers have gone from thousands to millions. For what? For running the banks into the ground?

To make matters worse and even more confusing, Mr Daniels was in charge when the false bank account in the name of Zenith Cafe Ltd was being debited. I have already blogged about this but I forgot to add a vital point. While the Bank are busy convincing the FSA this is an ‘internal’ account which our company was never going to be asked to repay, we have the letters demanding repayment and telling us we must stick to the overdraft limit – which is of course zero as you can’t negotiate an overdraft for an account you don’t know about.

Presumably Mr Daniels would say he didn’t know about the account. He would be oblivious to the fact Zenith Cafe appears to owe the Bank approx. £630,000 – £200,000 of which was to pay the Bank’s lawyers to be involved with 5 of our eviction hearings when they weren’t instructed in that matter.

But even the FSA are now saying they are taking this matter very seriously because it simply isn’t possible to add approximately £250,000 worth of interest and charges (going up at £11,000+ per month) to a £372,000 debt for their legal fees and come out with a £600,000+ credit which is explained away as an ‘internal’ matter. So maybe, as CEO, Mr Daniels should have known about it so he could have asked the question – who authorised it? And how many other fake accounts were/are manipulating the Bank’s loan book? What impact is this or other ‘internal’ accounts having on the P&L? Or did this well paid now ex CEO have no idea what was happening on his watch?

This morning I was reading an old letter from a Mr Godfrey at the Bank on behalf of Mr Daniels. It says – over and above the usual, “we’ve dealt with this so go away” – that the Bank is fully aware of our level of indebtedness. Maybe they were – but I certainly wasn’t as I knew nothing about the account for the first 18 months after the Bank created it! And I’m wondering now if my other company, Zenith Publishing Ltd, also has a false account attributed to it and how much does that one show as owing to the Bank?

Many people would say the ‘fantastic’ deal Mr Daniels and friends did when they merged a good or at least functioning bank, Lloyds, with a basket case, HBOS, caused thousands of people to lose a fortune. Not the kind of fortune top bankers or Corporate CEOs make in bonuses but the few thousand pounds a lot of people thought they were going to get annually as a pension when they retired – or the reasonable wage they made before thousands were made redundant when the Bank had to off load staff to increase profits – or the comfortable nest egg they had which meant they could afford a reasonable lifestyle. So many people’s lives changed thanks to the Lloyds/HBOS merger and even more lives have changed thanks to the overall bank bailouts.

I think we are all entitled to question why so many of the people who caused economic catastrophe have been so handsomely rewarded?

We are entitled to ask why people who have possibly broken the law, are not being prosecuted?

We are entitled to ask why people who have breached FSMA 2000, who have acted with little or no integrity and who have caused damage to our banking system via their negligence, have not been struck off as directors?

Personally I would ask why the ex CEO of Lloyds Banking Group was able to; totally ignore the evidence he was sent of a major fraud which has resulted in a major police investigation that is detrimental to the bank ; allow and even authorise the malicious persecution of the victims of the fraud; allow a false account to be operated in the name of a victim’s company (when false accounting is a criminal offence); and why should he walk away with £5 million pounds?

It doesn’t make any sense to me and I’m deeply disappointed UKFI, our Government and our regulators seem unable to understand how offensive this pay off is to the majority of the British people. This is not about banker bashing – it’s just logic and I imagine the 43,000 people who have lost or are losing their jobs at Lloyds, will also be wondering about the logic of them all ending up with nothing when the man in charge of the disastrous merger, can get so much?

Maybe, on a personal level, Mr Daniels is a good man – I wouldn’t know. But in my view, he isn’t a good business man and I cannot understand why a bank that is 41% owned by the state, is paying him £5M? Or why he has been getting £3,333 a day since last March for doing nothing? Or is the implication, it was costing us much more than that when Mr Daniels was doing ‘something’?

I’m inclined to think it was. He has cost this Nation a fortune – and now his pension from the part state owned bank he was instrumental in ruining, will keep paying him a fortune every year for the rest of his life.

Eric Daniels, Fred Goodwin, Peter Cummings – some might consider them to be three of the most successful bank robbers in British history. No horses, no getaway cars, no balaclava’s, no dynamite. How did they do it?

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A friend of mine e-mailed me yesterday to ask if I was ill? Her logic was, as I hadn’t expressed my outrage at the Vickers Report or, at the very least the time scale attached to it, in hundreds of tweets, I must be ill. I’m not ill. The problems I have had with banks have nothing to do with what Sir John Vickers was asked to address. As far as I know, Sir John was not asked to look at unadulterated profiteering by delinquent individuals in the financial sector – so I can’t see how his report will clean that sector up?

Actually, I was already disappointed in the report before it before came out and that’s because the remit of the Vickers report had already told us so much about what it would not do. REMIT – I hate that word. It’s become an establishment cop out that translates in the real world to ‘how to officially skirt the problem and not get anyone in trouble who might get us into trouble.’

I was never going to be excited about the Vickers Report – nothing against Sir John or even his proposals but because he was never going to look into what I consider to be the root of the problem with banking – bankers. Not all bankers but some bankers. In particular the ones who have got confused as to which particular definition of banker they were employed to be. Some have clearly interpreted their role as:

“Banker, a noun; the person in charge of the bank in a gambling game.”

Unfortunately, the game finished in 2008 and the ‘bankers’ left the table having taken all the unwitting player’s money with them.

For me, the good thing about the Vicker’s Report and its restricted remit, is the fact it still leaves the door wide open for someone else – hopefully not just via another report, to tackle the issues Sir John didn’t – the bankers. I suggest it should be done by a purpose built police task force, assisted by people like Professor Prem Sikka, who should have access to all documentation of the Section 166 and 168 FSA Investigations since 2005 – really it should go much further back but even I know you have to be realistic. They could start with looking at the part State owned banks and then move on to other UK banks who have paid millions of dollars in fines to the US Authorities for money laundering activities that should have seen senior executives go to jail. ‘Operation Hornet’ by Thames Valley Police could lead the way and set an example, as it is already into it’s second year of investigation into activities at HBOS – and it’s a cracking tale that would also show the spicier side of banking. I know the bankers, the regulator and the Government would really hate it but, hey ho, you can’t win ‘em all.

Sorry George, I know you’re having your own problems at the moment, what with tales of prostitutes and cocaine slipping into the press – and to be honest, I didn’t think you were the kind of man to associate with either, you dark horse you – but I hope your Government is beginning to understand that the problem of the bankers has not and will not go away until you deal with it. It’s a problem you simply cannot ring fence. You simply can’t allow the bankers to keep mugging us – and, let’s face it, saying you would stop it, is what got you into power. So do your job.

What it comes down to is this:

We all only have one life, that we know of. All over the Country, people’s lives have been ruined by a few, elite, bankers. Not the credit crunch, not the US sub-prime or the UK sub-prime and not even the fact that half the population apparently had to have flat screened TV’s and Nike trainers. Or that we all wanted to buy houses we couldn’t afford – as if there were any houses on the market that we could afford. And yet these seem to be the very bizarre excuses Government and bankers rely on regularly to explain the collapse of the economy.

The real problem is that a handful of people were given an obscene amount of power and control over the Country’s wealth and they decided to pocket it. And even now, with our economy in ruins, the same sort of person is being allowed to continue to cripple the population and get away with it. I know you won’t like such candid talk George and it upsets you but there it is.

There is only one guaranteed was to make a minority rich – you make the majority poor.

I’ll say it again George – the only guaranteed was to make a minority rich, is to make the majority poor. And that is what has happened. Gordon Brown orchestrated and authorised the plan and now, your Government George, has condoned it. All that talk from Mr Cameron about “a day of reckoning” and how honest, hard working people need to know that those bankers who had robbed the Country blind must pay the price, was, at the end of the day, a political campaign. Nothing more. But it’s not enough.

To me, the Vickers report is relatively unimportant – especially as it won’t be implemented completely for 8 years (which is really ridiculous). I haven’t read the 300+ pages of the report so I don’t presume to criticize it’s conclusions within the terms of its remit although I am surprised that anyone thinks we will have any economy if we wait 8 years to implement it. Reading the Vickers Report, brilliant as it may well be, misses the fundamental problem and it won’t answer my questions. What I want to know is:

• Who is going to be held responsible for destroying my business and my life? And what is your Government going to do about it?
• Who is going to be held responsible for destroying thousands of other SMEs and depriving so many people of their jobs? And what is your Government going to do about it?
• Who is going to be held responsible for all those people who thought they could retire in comfort and now find they will be destitute in their old age? And what is your Government going to do about it?
• Who is going to be held responsible for turning our banking system into a milk cow for an elite few even although this obviously flawed ethos would and did destroy our economy and our Country? And what is your Government going to do about it?
• Who is going to prosecute those bankers who have broken the law – which, by the way, is the only way you will ever get any control in the financial sector or return the balance of power from the banks to the elected Government? And what is your Government going to do about them?

I think the whole Country is aware of some of the names of the culprits – and we would be happy to pass them to you and to Hector Sants (no it’s not a list of IFA’s Hector), in case you really haven’t been reading the papers for the last four years and have totally missed some stunning examples of theft, fraud and corruption. Personally, I have 35,000 + documents giving clear evidence of criminality in HBOS and also of the people in HBOS and Lloyds Banking Group who have gone out of their way to conceal that evidence and pervert the course of justice. I am sure many other people would be happy to volunteer details of bankers from other banks (not mentioning any pink wafer biscuits here).

Strangely – no one in authority (or even the press in most cases) seems to want that evidence and even when I put it right under their noses, nothing happens. I can only conclude that, for some reason, certain people in the financial sector have been given a piece of paper which gives them total immunity from the laws of this land. Please retrieve those passes George and rip them up. Its the kind of thing that leads to anarchy.

Finally George, I am a British citizen who voted Conservative and I am relying on you to represent my interests and protect me from criminals. I only have one life as do all the millions of other people who have had their lives ruined by bankers. My life has been ruined for years and I have reported criminality by bankers to every authority possible and supplied the evidence. Four years on and nothing has happened – although I have heard some stunning excuses from the FSA as to why, even blatantly criminal acts, like false accounting, are not what they seem and will not be prosecuted.

So Mr Osborne, in a Country where you can go to jail for stealing a T-shirt or a bottle of wine, what penalty will you give the bankers who committed crimes? Not bankers in general – just those bankers who arrogantly and wilfully committed crimes against the nation.

You know who they are as well as I do. Or is your Government’s refusal to take action against these people, your way of telling the entire Country that a banker’s life has a different value to ours? I hate to say it but it seems as if your Government believes that to be the case. And if that cat gets out of the bag it won’t earn you any votes.

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I have been into Cambridge today on a shopping expedition. A rare occurrence as not many people accept buttons as payment these days and some of the victims of HBOS and other banks only have buttons. But it is my eldest daughter’s birthday tomorrow and I had to get something.

The changes in Cambridge are noticeable. The Grafton Centre was relatively empty and I’m not surprised. Many of the good shops have closed down and been replaced by bargain basement shops having endless sales of the kind of tacky bankrupt stock no one would want to buy even if it was being given away. Other shops are just lying empty and abandoned. The centre of Cambridge was busier but that may have been because it was a beautiful day and a lot of people were just ambling around the market or sitting on benches listening to the many and varied buskers. But looking in the shop windows I didn’t notice many actual hard core shoppers.

It wasn’t difficult to find some really good bargains. A trip to Fopp produced the very CD my daughter wanted for £3.00. A trip to a really beautiful chocolate shop, Bellina, produced a buy one get one free bag of Belgium chocolate whirls. There were no queues in Fopp and I was the only customer in the chocolate shop. The two assistants – who I assume were the owners – looked entirely dejected.

It occurs to me that if things carry on as they are, shopping centre’s all over the Country will be closing down because few small traders can afford the rent and the rates and of course, the biggest problem – many people can’t afford to buy anything except essentials, like food, these days. We could start opening small food shops in city centres but there is little chance of anyone buying from a sole trader what they can buy at half the price from a major Supermarket. So not much good news from the High Street but hardly surprising. After all, if a nation is financially crippled and then served a big dollop of austerity so the Government can help the people that crippled it, it’s hardly a recipe for consumerism.

Meanwhile, back on the funny farm, bankers have been busy lobbying the Government this week not to introduce the reforms in the Vickers Report for the foreseeable future. I don’t suppose they have found it too difficult to get the ear of the Prime Minister as his Parliamentary Secretary, Jeremy Heywood, is an ex MD of Morgan Stanley who still has a hotline to the City.

Rumour has it Mr Cameron has already caved in to the bankers demands (before the Report is even out) and the earliest we can expect any reform is 2015. As my husband pointed out to me, that is 15 years after the introduction of FSMA 2000 which more or less gave bankers carte blanch and 13 years after the introduction of the Enterprise Act which, with its amendments to the Insolvency Act, legalised so many offensive malpractices in the financial sector.

I imagine the BBA has been working overtime on this subject. It would be fair to say I am often having a pop at Angela Knight of the BBA but I have to admit, as her job appears to be to protect banks and bankers at all costs, she does it very well. In fact, if David Cameron was even half as protective of this Country and its citizens as Angela is of the banks, we’d be a lot better off. It is almost as if Angela and all the Bank bosses see the financial sector as a separate Country to Britain. And this bankers Principality has its own rules, laws, ethics and entitlements. To most of us it would appear to be a very unpleasant and unprincipled Country because it seems to work on the premise that greed is good and that its rulers are an untouchable elite who can do what ever they like and get away with it.

What’s more, it is a very small Country which believes it has an unchallengeable right to dominate and control the population of its neighbours in the larger Country called Britain that the rest of us live in. But what makes this tiny independent state or Country so successful, is that its rulers are obsessively patriotic. They stick together and everything they do is for the benefit of there own small fiefdom. They appear to see nothing wrong with robbing Britain blind because they have no allegiance to Britain. They have brought Britain to its knees and, with the exception of a few insincere mumbles of ‘we’re sorry’ (which reminded me of a vintage ‘Not the 9 o’clock news’ sketch), they see no reason not to continue with their whole scale pillaging.

Of course this bizarre scenario whereby a big country and tens of millions of people are continually held hostage by a handful of what some people may call greedy, egotistical, sociopaths, could not have come about without the actions of our even madder ex Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and his previous buddy, now sparring partner, Mr Darling. Which is why it so so desperately disappointing to see David Cameron caving in to bankers demands again.

Ultimately of course, the small callous state the bankers live in will implode – taking Britain with it. Where as Cambridge and other shopping centres currently have some empty shops, we will end up with most of the shops being empty. Councils, almost hysterical now to milk money out of home owners and businesses in order to keep their own top brass in feather beds, will make it impossible to rent properties to work from or even to work at home. Unemployment will go up – pensions and social services will go down, bailiffs will become a plague and our prisons will be full of people the Government will insist are guilty of reaction without cause.

Of course we could employ reportedly intelligent people like Sir John Vickers to look at what has gone wrong with the financial sector and start putting it right. Britain could gradually wrest the financial control back from the bankers and stabilise the economy. Which is what I thought the Coalition were doing. But, yet again, that strategy is not convenient for the bankers – so reform, it seems, will be back burnered and I dare say the usual bonuses row will be as easily defeated in the near future.

Alternatively, we could penalise or prosecute those bankers who have flagrantly breached FSMA 2000 or broken the law and caused so many people so much pain. Call me mad Mr C but I strongly believe your strategy of ‘tough love’ would work very well on bankers and looting from behind the Board Room doors might not seem so attractive if it results in a stay in Her Majesty’s prisons. The evidence of criminal actions is there in many cases – but, strangely, when it comes to those bankers who were at the top of the tree when the so called ‘credit crunch’ hit, it seems the authorities and the Government are less than enthusiastic to take action despite the heroic words of Mr Cameron back in 2009 when he said:

“….there should be "a day of reckoning" for those who have presided over the near-collapse of the banking system and reckless lending running into billions of pounds.”

Or when he said:

"People who work hard and have paid their taxes are seeing billions of pounds of taxes go into these banks and yet large bonuses are still being paid. That's just wrong,"

It seems to me the only thing being successfully ring fenced in the financial sector is the bankers themselves. They are ring fenced against the law, morality, society, the laws of the land and most of all, against reality. And until we have a Government as patriotic about Britain as the bankers are about their private domain, things can only get worse.

What’s best for the Country v What’s best for the Banks. It should be no contest – but it is and it’s not encouraging to note a second Government is letting the bankers win again. Unpatriotic.

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